The Rescue Artist

to deem his crimes newsworthy. This time they did. Scott, who had hoped that his part of the deal would earn him ?75,000, ended up instead (at age 67) sentenced to three and a half years in prison.

Scott had succumbed to the thrill, “more potent than any woman,” of trying to outwit the clumsy and rule- bound authorities. “As a husband I was a failure and as a lover indifferent,” he acknowledged in his autobiography, “because my real passion was to be out on the roof, or creeping through the country, or making a little tunnel through a wall. I’d found this private … world which yielded a sexual, antisocial excitement unobtainable by other means.”

Charley Hill thought Scott was a poseur and a blowhard, but he shared Scott’s disdain for authority and his taste for the grand gesture. For Hill, when it came to art, and to life in general, high stakes were the only ones worth playing for. In college, he had rowed crew but quit when it became plain that he would never be great. “Unless you can gear yourself up for the Olympics or a national championship,” he asked, as if the answer were self-evident, “what’s the point of being a rower?”

Art crime was the same. “When I’m talking to villains,” Hill said, “the bigger they are, the more interesting it becomes. And the paintings I want to get back are the masterpieces of the western European canon.”

The outsized ambition was characteristic. But so was a sense of mocking self-awareness. The cynical gaze that Hill directed at the rest of the world could turn inward as well. “I feel as if I’m some kind of St. George,” he admitted happily. “The thieves are the dragon, and these wonderful paintings are the damsel about to be eaten.

“It’s all bullshit, of course, but it’s necessary bullshit. You’ve got to have some sort of self-esteem in this life, and that’s mine.”

35

The Plan

MORNING, MAY 7, 1994

While Ulving spent a terrifying night obeying the cryptic commands of the man with the cap, Hill snored contentedly behind the thick walls of his room at the Plaza. At six in the morning, his phone rang. “This is Johnsen. I’m in the lobby. It’s time.”

Hill phoned Walker, and the two cops met Johnsen downstairs. “Let’s go for a drive,” Johnsen said. The little party set out in Hill’s rented car. Walker took the wheel, with Hill at his side. Johnsen sat behind Hill, twisted halfway around so that he could look out the back window.

Johnsen gave directions, though he wouldn’t reveal their destination. A rendezvous somewhere, Hill and Walker figured, presumably with Ulving and the bug-eyed stranger.

“Just make sure we’re not followed,” Johnsen told Walker. He cast a nervous glance out the side window and then corkscrewed himself around again, to resume his vigil out the back.

Walker quickly convinced himself there was no one on his tail—for once, they’d shed the Norwegians—but he hammed things up for Johnsen’s benefit. He came to a traffic circle and made a point of going around an extra time; he pulled off the highway as if he had engine trouble and let traffic pass by; he whipped across the road in a tire- squealing U-turn and briefly headed back in the direction they had come. Hill enjoyed the show from his front-row seat.

About thirty-five miles south of Oslo, they reached the town of Drammen. Johnsen pointed to a restaurant alongside the highway. Walker pulled in.

“Park next to that Mercedes.”

Hill, Walker, and Johnsen walked into the small, tidy cafe. It was quiet and almost empty at this early hour on a frigid Saturday morning. A few patrons sipped their coffee and tried to shake off their sleepiness. Ulving sat waiting at a table with the stranger. He’d never given his name, and Hill thought of him as Psycho.

Ulving, cringing and bleary-eyed, looked like the bigger man’s captive. The three newcomers joined Ulving and Psycho. Ulving barely spoke. Psycho, on the other hand, started in on business at once. It was time to work out the exchange; he had a plan. Walker would bring the money to a particular address. If the money was all there and there was no funny business, Hill or Walker would get a phone call relaying the painting’s whereabouts.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Walker growled. Why would he hand over the money for nothing and then trust the crooks to keep their side of the bargain?

Psycho countered with another plan that was just as flawed.

“That’s bullshit! Forget it!” Walker snapped. Logistics were his domain.

The mood at the crowded table was sullen and tense. Neither side trusted the other; each needed what the other had. Ulving cowered, Psycho blustered, Walker snarled. Psycho repeated his first, no-hope plan.

“Screw that! Find another way.” This time it was Hill.

A tour bus pulled into the parking lot. Suddenly the cafe was jammed with new arrivals jostling one another as they looked for seats and menus and shuffled off to the bathrooms. Ulving took advantage of the commotion to jump to his feet. “This is all too much. I don’t know what I’m involved in here. I have to leave.”

Psycho grabbed Ulving by the arm. “Sit down!” he growled, and he shoved Ulving back into his seat.

Ulving fell silent. Psycho leaned across the table and glared at Walker and Hill. “If we don’t get this done, I’m going to eat the painting, shit it out, and send it to the minister of culture.”

Johnsen chimed in with a plan. Just as bad as the others. Finally, Walker cut through the impasse.

“Why don’t we do it this way?” he said. “I’ll drive back to the hotel with you two”—he gestured toward Johnsen and Psycho—”and Chris will go with you”—Walker glanced at Hill and then at Ulving—”and look at the picture. If everything’s okay, Chris will ring me, and I’ll give you the money. Then Chris can come back with the picture in a taxi.”

It was a simple plan but it offered something to everyone. Johnsen and Psycho jumped at it. They knew that Walker had charge of the money; where he went, they wanted to be. Poor Ulving liked the idea, too, since it set him free from Johnsen and the stranger. Hill welcomed any plan that would get him to The Scream.

Walker would be on his own with two large, dangerous men, but he’d be back in the vicinity of John Butler and his police command post. In addition, by heading off with Johnsen and Psycho, Walker had separated them from the painting. If Hill couldn’t find it, or decided he’d been shown a fake … well, the plan didn’t cover that.

Still, Hill liked it. For a start, the scheme got him out of the goddamned restaurant. And Sid was a big boy. He could take care of himself.

In agreement at last, all five men headed to the parking lot. Psycho strode ahead, several steps in front of the others, as if he were in charge. That was a showoff’s mistake, and Hill registered it at once. What an arrogant asshole. Hill and Walker took the chance to hang back and exchange a few clandestine words. Walker kept his voice low and relied on the rumble of traffic on the highway to muffle his words even further.

“Get hold of Butler straight away and tell him what’s happening,” he whispered.

“I’ll do it as soon as I can.”

At the cars, the men split into two groups. Walker, Johnsen, and Psycho piled into Hill’s rented car and headed north, back to Oslo. Hill and Ulving settled into Ulving’s Mercedes sports coupe—Ulving had left his station wagon at home—and started south. Precisely where Ulving was taking him, Hill didn’t know.

The trail ended, he presumed, wherever the thieves had hidden The Scream. But even that was a guess, or a hope. All that Hill knew for certain was that he was headed into the unknown, without backup, at risk once again that someone would jam a shotgun into his neck.

36

“Down Those Stairs”

MID DAY, MAY 7, 1994